Re: 2.4.0-prerelease IDE CD-ROM problem

OK, mystery (partially) solved.  I have the Gnome CD Player applet running in my
panel.  (Yeah, I know, if I'm running Gnome, I deserve whatever I get.  :-)
Anyway, the CD player can be added to the panel in two forms: a launcher that
just launches the application window, and an applet that has controls which
allow a CD to be played directly from the panel without opening a window.  I
recently switched from the first to the second variety.  It turns out that this
applet apparently grabs the device as soon as a CD is inserted (to identify the
CD and, if necessary, go out on the Internet to find it in the CDDB database).
It doesn't prevent a data CD from being mounted or unmounted, but in the most
recent kernels, it _does_ prevent the CD drive tray from being unlocked after
it's unmounted  The only way to open the drive is to hit the "Eject" control on
the applet itself.  When I tried this yesterday, it hung and required a reboot
every time.  However, the new (Jan 4) version of prelease-diff fixed this so
that the eject control works.  Without this applet running, the CD drive behaves
normally.

BTW, this isn't just a ThinkPad issue; my homebuilt Pentium MMX tower exhibits
the same behavior.